More than 150 Kurdish rebels killed in Iraq: Turkish Army

Xinhua Ankara, May 4 (Xinhua) More than 150 rebels of the Kurdish rebels have been killed in a series of air raids in the past two days, the Turkish Army has said. In a statement posted on its website Saturday, the Turkish General Staff said the air raids carried out by the army Thursday and Friday killed more than 150 members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and the operation led to panic among the rebels.

Several senior PKK commanders might be among those killed, the statement added.

However, PKK spokesman Ahmed Danis denied the Turkish military claim, saying that only six of their fighters had been killed during the air raids.

“Turkish media is exaggerating the number of people killed and wounded,” he said.

Turkish jets bombed targets of the PKK in northern Iraq Thursday, according to the report, and the raid, which started shortly before midnight and continued onto Friday, targeted PKK camps in the Qandil area of northern Iraq.

Besides the deaths, Turkish jets destroyed 29 hideouts, five caves, three checkpoints and one communication point belonging to the Kurdish rebels, the statement added.

The Turkish military has periodically bombed and shelled suspected PKK positions in northern Iraq during the past few months. In February it launched an eight-day ground incursion into Iraq.

The PKK, listed by the US and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict. Xinhua